Football Coalition vs John-Williams' TTFA

The group com­pris­es stake­hold­ers such as T&T Su­per League pres­i­dent Kei­th Look Loy, Women's Foot­ball League (WoLF) pres­i­dent Su­san Joseph-War­rick, North­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (NFA) pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Har­ford, Cen­tral Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (CFA) pres­i­dent Shymdeo Go­sine, Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League (SS­FL) pres­i­dent William Wal­lace, for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, CFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clynt Tay­lor, for­mer T&T Pro League CEO Sam Phillips and NFA sec­re­tary Rashawn Mars.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, Look Loy said the group's main agen­da is to rid the sport of TTFA pres­i­dent John-Williams, un­der whose man­age­ment the sport has sunk to its low­est ever in lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball. He told the me­dia he will be the group's om­buds­man and said any­one fol­low­ing foot­ball to­day knows T&T is in cri­sis.

He point­ed to the lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, the many mat­ters the TTFA has be­fore the courts, the col­lapse of the na­tion­al teams' pro­grammes, the TTFA debt, fail­ure of the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment and the fail­ure of the grass­roots pro­gramme among many oth­ers as ev­i­dence of their need to form the group. Look Loy said by Sep­tem­ber, they will es­tab­lish a com­mon, col­lec­tive de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme for the coun­try's foot­ball, de­scrib­ing it as a road map of how they will save the TTFA and foot­ball. The pro­gramme is to be put be­fore the mem­bers of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty and the wider pub­lic as a whole for con­sul­ta­tion, as the TTFA is not the prop­er­ty of the pres­i­dent, he said. He said the group will al­so form a unit­ed slate that will pro­vide strong can­di­dates to con­test the TTFA elec­tion in No­vem­ber.

Har­ford, who was the pre­vi­ous or­ga­niz­er of the T&T Su­per League, said he and his as­so­ci­a­tion de­cid­ed to join the cause be­cause they are con­vinced good lead­er­ship of foot­ball in T&T has to­tal­ly evap­o­rat­ed.

"The 2019 prof­it and loss state­ment of the TTFA speaks to a pro­ject­ed loss of $42 mil­lion dol­lars, not in­clud­ing the Home of Foot­ball. This is print­ed and cir­cu­lat­ed to mem­bers of the TTFA. We ful­ly ex­pect that when you add the sur­pris­es of the Home of Foot­ball, that it will reach $60 mil­lion by the time we get to the elec­tions," he said.

"That is not fright­en­ing to us. What is fright­en­ing to us is the way the TTFA has treat­ed with its foun­da­tion project, the zones. There are six zones in T&T, of which NFA is one. We man­age 24 ac­tive clubs, 11 acad­e­mies and there are al­ways six to sev­en clubs that are reg­is­tered but not ac­tive in a giv­en year and thou­sands of youth foot­ballers.

"In four years, since 2015, based on the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion we get from the TTFA, the FI­FA has giv­en in grants and fund­ing to foot­ball in T&T, $60 mil­lion in to­tal. North­ern foot­ball, in those four years, re­ceives a to­tal of $25,000 out of $60 mil­lion. Fur­ther, we are man­dat­ed by the TTFA to pay an an­nu­al reg­is­tra­tion fee of $5,000, if we do not pay it, we are deemed to be non-com­pli­ant, in­ac­tive and will not be recog­nised as a mem­ber of the TTFA. So we have re­ceived $25,000 and have paid TTFA $20,000 over the last four years. North­ern foot­ball was run on $5,000 out of all the FI­FA fund­ing."

Ear­li­er, Wal­lace high­light­ed the fall of youth, women and se­nior foot­ball in the CON­CA­CAF re­gion un­der John-Williams.

Look Loy lat­er read out writ­ten sup­port state­ments from for­mer na­tion­al goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack and for­mer na­tion­al mid­field­er Maylee At­tin-John­son. Sha­ka His­lop, an­oth­er ex-na­tion­al goalie, al­so sent a video show­ing his sup­port to the group, say­ing build­ing a home of foot­ball is not an ex­cuse for the lack of trans­paren­cy and poor on-field per­for­mances among oth­er things.

KEITH LOOK-LOY PRESS CONFERENCE